The first half of 2015 has produced bottom-line results for Veterans Memorial Arena.
The venue has been recognized by Venues Today magazine by receiving a first-place ranking in the U.S. in attendance and gross ticket sales for venues with 10,001-15,000 seats.
It also placed third in the world for attendance and sixth in the world by gross ticket sales.
The slate of shows so far this year includes Elton John, two Kevin Hart shows, The Who, Nitro Circus Live, the WWE and Franklin Graham’s Festival of Hope, which ran three nights.
The second half of the year includes Tim McGraw, Festival of Praise and the SEC/ACC Women’s Basketball Challenge.
Last year, the arena attracted more than 550,000 people, breaking the annual attendance record set of 518,000 set in 2004.
Tim Irish appointed J.Perry Insurance president
Tim Irish has been appointed president of J.P. Perry Insurance, company CEO Joe Perry has announced.
Irish joined the company in 2003 and was promoted to vice president in 2005. The 20-year industry veteran will oversee all areas of the agency’s operations in the new role.
Irish takes over for Perry, who will assume the role of CEO and concentrate on strategic planning, product line acquisition and marketing.
“Tim has displayed outstanding performance over his years at the agency,” said Perry in a news release.
Irish is a chartered property casualty underwriter and serves on several national insurance companies’ advisory council.
J.P. Perry Insurance was founded in 1954.
Unclaimed property auction raises $1.5M for education
The state’s 2015 unclaimed property auction held Saturday in Jacksonville raised $1.53 million for Florida public schools, according to a news release from Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater.
While in the state’s care, all unclaimed property funds are placed into the state’s public education trust fund where they “support the greater good until claimed.”
This year’s auction was the second-highest yielding ever, behind the $1.7 million raised in Fort Lauderdale two years ago.
The highest-grossing individual auction items included a platinum, 4-carat asscher-cut diamond ring that sold for $100,000 and a gold and diamond men’s ring totaling 11.8 carats that sold for $70,000.
The sale included more than 50,000 items from abandoned safe deposit boxes that went unclaimed despite years of effort to locate the owners or heirs.
Proceeds from the sale of these items can be claimed at any time and at no cost should a property owner come forward.
Visit fltreasurehunt.org to see items.
Jeffrey Everett named VP for Advanced Disposal
Advanced Disposal has hired Jeffrey Everett as vice president and assistant general counsel.
He’ll focus on general corporate, securities and finance matters, litigation management and merger and acquisition transactions.
Everett has more than 14 years of experience in the industry, previously serving in positions with Waste Management Inc. and Veolia Environmental Services North America.
Advanced Disposal is based in Ponte Vedra and is the largest privately owned environmental services company in the U.S.
Dalton Agency named Small Agency of the Year in Southeast
The Dalton Agency, a Jacksonville-based national advertising and public relations firm, recently received a national award for being tops in the Southeast.
The firm received the Small Agency of the Year Award for the Southeastern U.S. by Ad Age, a news source for the marketing and media communities. The honor came during the Small Agency Awards, which celebrates the work of independent agencies with 150 or fewer employees.
Dalton was nominated for its work with the America Heart Association and American Stroke Association. The “Life is Why” campaigns used flexible brand platforms to help people create an “emotional connection” with the organizations.
The Dalton Agency also has offices in Atlanta; Columbia, S.C.; Myrtle Beach, S.C.; Orlando; Savannah, Ga.; and Tampa.
Brooks Rehabilitation buys AmeriCare
Jacksonville-based Brooks Rehabilitation has purchased another local business, AmeriCare Home Health.
AmeriCare was founded in 2004 and provided home health-care services such as nursing, physical, occupational and speech therapy, social work and private duty. It operates out of Jacksonville and has 10 satellite offices servicing 23 counties in Northeast and Central Florida, employing 125 full-time employees.
Brooks provides rehabilitation services, operating an in-patient hospital that provides rehab and medical care for people requiring intensive in-patient therapy. It was 26 outpatient clinics as well as Brooks Home Care, which serves Northeast Florida.
The combined companies will be renamed Brooks AmeriCare Home Health.
“A lot of their care business is outside Jacksonville, so it is a good way to expand our home health care division and enter some other markets, while adding to our expertise and talent in the areas that we already serve,” said Doug Baer, Brooks’ CEO, in a news release.
UNF professor earns National Endowment for the Humanities
University of North Florida history professor David Courtwright has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant is designed to bring humanities scholarships into book clubs and onto best-seller lists.
The endowment awarded $1.7 million total in grants for 36 nonfiction book projects. Courtwright’s award was among the first made under the organization’s Public Scholar Program created in 2014 as part of “The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square” initiative. The goal of that is to bring humanities into the public light and foster ways to make scholarship relevant to contemporary life.
The maximum grant is $50,400 for a 12-month period.
Courtwright will use his grant to complete a book about “very bad habits” from alcoholism and drugs abuse to junk food and Internet addiction.
It will chronicle the rise of abusive consumption and addiction in modern life and on the global economic scales that have enabled them.
In 2001, he published “Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World,” an academic best-seller.